Corbridge

Corbridge Market
Place and the Percy Cross

Corbridge is an exceptionally attractive village standing on the
north bank of the River Tyne some 16 miles west of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a
little over three east of Hexham. The
village has been bypassed to the north by the A69 since 1977, and to the east
by the A68 since 1982, so you will only find yourself in Corbridge if you
actually want to be here. It is well worth the slight detour, whichever
direction you are travelling in.

You can think of the centre of Corbridge as comprising two very
roughly north-south streets, linked together by a series of (also very roughly)
east-west streets. There are two fixed points essential to understanding the
layout of the village. The first is the bridge over the River Tyne at the
southern end of the village, and the second is the Market Place, at its heart.
Several things come together to make Corbridge such an attractive place, but
perhaps the most obvious are the age of many of its buildings and the fact that
almost all are constructed of the same light coloured stone.

The Market Place is an excellent spot from which to start an
exploration of Corbridge. At its centre stands the Percy Cross, a market cross
paid for in 1814 by the Duke of Northumberland. This is very unusual in having
a shaft and cross made of cast iron, and it stands on a circular stepped base.
Also in the Market Place is the pyramid-topped Market Place Pant. This dates
back to 1815 and was one of a series of "pants" or drinking fountains that once
provided the village with fresh water. A number of these still survive in
different parts of Corbridge.

Overlooking the Market Place on its northern side is
St Andrew's Parish Church. A church has
stood on this spot since 674, and some of the original Saxon nave remains
visible today, despite the significant changes that have been made to the
church over its enormously long life. Views of the church from the Market Place
are interrupted by the stone lych gate, built as a memorial to those who fell
in the First World War. On the south east side of the churchyard, a little
concealed by trees and other buildings, is a stone vicar's pele, a small
defensive tower house to keep the vicar and his family safe. This was probably
built in the 1300s, drawing heavily, like many of Corbridge's early buildings,
on readily available stone from Coriosopitum, the
Roman town that stood half a
mile to the north west. Close to the door into the tower is Corbridge's
original market cross, whose shaft dates back to the 1200s, and whose base is
the reused top of a Roman column.

Running north past the west end of St Andrew's is Watling Street. This reflects
the Roman heritage of the area, but is a slightly confusing name as the best
known Watling Street ran from Dover to North Wales. Built into the wall of the
churchyard overlooking this street is The King's Oven. This is a communal oven
first used in 1310 (and used as recently as the 1800s) intended to allow
residents to bake their bread. The view north along Watling Street is closed
off by The Wheatsheaf Hotel, one of a number of large inns and hotels in the
village which reflect Corbridge's location at an important crossroads on the
coaching networks of the 1700s. A yard behind the hotel is overlooked by a
Roman statue in a squared niche high on one wall: presumably liberated from the
Roman town at some point in antiquity.

The Wheatsheaf stands at one end of St Helen's Street, the most
northerly of the four "cross" streets within the heart of the village itself.
The street takes its name from the presence here of a (long gone) medieval
chapel. Perhaps the most significant of the east-west roads is Hill Street,
which runs along the north side of St
Andrew's before broadening out. On the north side of its eastern end stands
the Golden Lion, another large inn, while on the opposite side of the
north-south Princes Street and closing views along Hill Street is Corbridge's
Town Hall, built in 1887.

Heading (slightly south of) east from the Market Place is a choice
of roads, Middle Street and Front Street. The Black Bull on Middle Street comes
complete with an intriguing inscription on a window frame: "Marj, U.S EII
1755". We've no idea what some of it means, though the date is an obvious
element and presumably indicates the date of construction of the inn. Middle
Street and Front Street come together at the west end of Main Street, which
heads out of the village towards Newcastle upon Tyne, forming what was until
1977 part of the A69.

The near end of Main Street is dominated by the Angel Inn on its
north side, while a little further along on the same side is Low Hall, said to
be Corbridge's oldest house and partly built in the years either side of 1400.
If you turn right on reaching the near end of Main Street you can follow a
continuation of Prince's Street down to Corbridge Bridge. The structure you see
today is made up of seven arches with a total span of 146m. It was built in
1674 and widened in 1881. Major flooding struck the Tyne Valley in 1771, and
Corbridge Bridge was the only bridge along the length of the River Tyne not to
be destroyed. The bridge you see today is said to have replaced a medieval
bridge built in 1235 which had become derelict by the 1600s. The River Tyne was
first bridged by the Romans, and traces of their bridge can be found on the
river bed to the south of the site of the
Roman town and to the west of
the later bridge and modern Corbridge.

As is clear from the above, the origins of Corbridge owe much to the
Romans. Their town at Coriosopitum, now known as
Corbridge Roman Town, stood half
a mile to the north west and large parts of it have been excavated and opened
to visitors. The traditional wisdom is that Roman Corbridge simply fizzled out
after the departure of the legions in the early 400s, and that the Saxon
settlement of Corbridge then simply formed a couple of centuries later on a
site almost immediately to the south east of it. It seems much more likely that
the residents of Roman Corbridge and their descendents never really left, but
that with the coming of the church in the 600s, the focus of the settlement
simply shifted from where it had been previously to where it is now.

Corbridge was attacked and destroyed by the Danes in 875. It again
suffered badly during the two battles of Corbridge, in 914 and 918, which
involved Northumbrians, Vikings and Scots in a historically slightly confused
series of conflicts. In the aftermath it was recorded that only the stone
church was still standing in the town. Corbridge was made a Royal Burgh by King
John in 1201 and by the middle of the century was the second largest settlement
in Northumberland after Newcastle. Things changed dramatically following an
attack by Scots under William
Wallace in 1296 which virtually destroyed Corbridge, and a visitation by
the Black Death in 1349.

Corbridge remained a relatively small village until it began to
service the coaching trade in the 1700s. Then, in 1835, a railway station
opened half a mile south of the village on the Newcastle to
Carlisle line. A mile and a
half to the north east of Corbridge as the crow flies is the fascinating
Aydon Castle.